Welcome to the strange world of the IPCC: IPCC Cites an Unpublished Journal 39 Times

[Henk Elegeert]

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Henk Elegeert
May 13, 2010  IPCC Cites an Unpublished Journal 39
Times<http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/2010/05/ipcc-cites-unpublished-journal-39-times.html>
 We read a lot of magazines in our house. Occasionally, an issue arrives in
which nearly every article is engaging and (in the case of cooking
magazines) every recipe sounds amazing. In short, the issue is a keeper.

*The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change* (IPCC) had an experience
like that. It *was so impressed by one
edition<http://www.springerlink.com/content/p4081vl18412/?sortorder=asc&v=expanded>of
the academic journal Climatic
Change that it cited 16 of the 21 papers published that month*. The journal
editors should take a bow. When three-quarters of a single issue of your
publication is relied on by a Nobel-winning report, you're doing something
right.

Except for one small problem. *The issue in question - May
2007<http://www.springerlink.com/content/p4081vl18412/?sortorder=asc&v=expanded>-
didn't exist yet when the IPCC wrote its report.
* Moreover, none of the research papers eventually published in that issue
had been finalized prior to the IPCC's cutoff date.

As the IPCC chairman recently reminded
us<http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2264>,
that organization's 2007 report:

...was based on scientific studies completed before January 2006, and did
not include later studies...

That's what the rules say. And that's what was supposed to have happened.
But according to the online abstracts for each of the 16 papers cited by the
IPCC and published in the May 2007 issue of *Climatic Change* (see my
working notes here<https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AQKfjKsXaxaGZGZ3c3c0Y3FfNDhnZm42ZmhnNg&hl=en>):


   - 15 of them weren't accepted by the journal until *Oct. 17, 2006*
   - the other wasn't accepted until *May 18, 2006*

The first date is highly significant. As the second box on this
page<http://www.ipcc.ch/calendar_of_meetings/calendar_of_meetings_2006.htm>makes
clear, the IPCC expert review period ended on
*June 2, 2006* for Working Group 1 and on *July 21, 2006* for Working Group
2. This means the expert reviewers had offered their comments on the second
draft and had already exited the stage. It means the IPCC had reached the
utmost end of a process that represented years of collective labour.

*So how could 16 papers, accounting for 39 new citations across fours
chapters and two working groups, have made it into this twice vetted,
next-to-finalized IPCC report?* Those citations don't reference research
papers the wider scientific community had already digested. They don't even
reference papers that were hot off the press. Instead, *in 15 of 16 cases,
no expert reviewer could possibly have evaluated these papers since they
hadn't yet been accepted for publication by the journal itself.
*
Where do these 39 citations of the May 2007 issue of *Climatic Change* turn
up in the IPCC report? [working notes
here<https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AQKfjKsXaxaGZGZ3c3c0Y3FfNDhnZm42ZmhnNg&hl=en>
]

   - Chapt. 11 by Working Group 1 references ten papers (20 citations in
   total)
   - Chapt. 12 by Working Group 2 references nine papers (15 citations in
   total)
   - Chapt. 2 by Working Group 2 references two papers (2 citations in
   total)
   - Chapt. 3 by Working Group 2 references two papers (2 citations in
   total)

Among the 10 papers cited in Chapter 11 three were co-authored by Jens
Hesselbjerg Christensen<http://glwww.dmi.dk/f+u/klima/klimasektion/jhc.html>.
I'm sure it's sheer coincidence that this gentleman served as one of
two coordinating
lead authors <http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch11.html>for
that chapter.

   - see the first abstract
here<http://www.springerlink.com/content/m925t4665130734l/?p=e260967c0f0541838a2c6c7df6be246f&pi=1>(cited
twice as Jacob et al. 2007 on this
   page<http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch11s11-3-2.html>of
the IPCC report)
   - second abstract is
here<http://www.springerlink.com/content/m35mu141g142112q/?p=e260967c0f0541838a2c6c7df6be246f&pi=2>(cited
as Déqué et al. 2007 on this
   page<http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch11s11-10-2-2.html>
   )
   - third abstract is
here<http://www.springerlink.com/content/wg0w3m16w4150838/?p=e260967c0f0541838a2c6c7df6be246f&pi=7>(cited
as Christensen et al. 2007 on this
   page<http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch11s11-3-2.html>
   )

I'm equally certain there's no connection whatsoever between the fact
that Jørgen
E. Olesen <http://www.agrsci.org/content/view/full/2117> was a lead
author<http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch12.html>for
the IPCC's Chapter 12 and that a paper he co-authored in the May 2007
issue of *Climatic Change* got cited four times in that chapter. (That
abstract is here<http://www.springerlink.com/content/x676012373q1g6g2/?p=7c1ef44b0157490898d34fe01a5e5f74&pi=20>.
Cited as Olesen et al., 2007 four times on this
page<http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch12s12-4-7.html>
.)

*Welcome to the strange world of the IPCC. Whenever one turns over a new
rock there's something shady beneath.
*
..

Coming soon: the research paper that wasn't accepted for publication until
May 2008, yet got cited seven times in the IPCC's 2007 report

..


"

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